F. Maurice Speed

F. Maurice Speed (1911–1998) was an English film critic who created two innovative and long-lasting publications: the listings magazine What's On in London (which ran from 1935 until 2007) and later the Film Review annual, which began in 1944 and in 2014 celebrated its 69th edition.

Born in London on 18 October 1911, Frederick Maurice Speed began a lifelong devotion to filmgoing in the small cinemas around Hammersmith. According to a potted biography published in 1991, he began his working life as an apprentice on the Harrow Observer.

Having been an assistant to Edward Martell, proprietor of The Sunday Referee, it was to Martell that Speed turned when he had the idea to set up the listings magazine What's On in London. First published in September 1935,What's On was edited (and almost entirely written) by Speed, who titled his editorials 'Round and About'.

According to Denis Gifford in his Speed obituary for The Independent, "During Coronation Year of 1937 Speed realised the vast appeal that George VI's coronation would have for visitors from abroad. 'Indispensable to Visitors' became the front-page subtitle from then on, replacing the original and less catchy 'Complete Arrangements for the London Week'."

Among Speed's earliest What's On pseudonyms were J. Lilywhite Haffner (for book reviews) and Frederick Deeps; he was still using the latter for shorter critiques in his Film Review annuals in the 1990s. He made his last contribution to the magazine in 1996, while What’s On itself outlived its creator by nine years, eventually folding in 2007.

Speed's second innovative concept was based on his conviction that "What the ordinary moviegoer lacks is a more or less complete annual record, in picture and story, of his year's filmgoing. Ironically enough, it wasn't until the war came along, and I had been discharged from the Army, that I decided, as nobody else seemed so inclined, I might as well attempt to fill the void myself."

The idea came to fruition in 1944 as Film Review. As Speed recalled in the annual's 50th edition, "That initial 1944-45 book sold some 80,000 copies to a book-starved public and the second annual reached a dizzy 250,000 print order." The book rapidly developed into an annual illustrated digest of all the films screened in the UK. As time went on, Speed gathered together more and more outside contributors, among them Peter Noble, William K. Everson, Oswell Blakeston, Peter Cowie, Anthony Slide, Ivan Butler and Gordon Gow, as well as soliciting special articles by such film industry figures as James Mason, Michael Balcon, Cecil B. De Mille, Jean Kent, Rita Hayworth and Alfred Hitchcock. He also showed a keen interest in technical advances such as stereo sound and CinemaScope.

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